REDUCED TEMPERATURE DEPENDENCE OF HIGH-CONCENTRATION

PHOTOVOLTAIC SOLAR CELL OPEN-CIRCUIT VOLTAGE (VOC) AT HIGH

CONCENTRATION LEVELS
Sewang Yoon, Vahan Garboushian,
AMONIX, Inc., 3425 Fujita Street, Torrance, CA, 90505 (310) 325-8091
ABSTRACT
Thermal management has been an important issue
for both one-sun flat-plate, and concentration system
applications. It is well known that system output power, or
efficiency, decreases with the increasing temperature of the
cell incorporated within the system mainly due to a decrease
in open-circuit voltage (Voc) as a function of increasing
temperature. This paper reports the measurement results of
temperature sensitivity for VOC of AMONIX's high-
concentration photovoltaic (HCPV) cells at various
temperatures (25' C - 65' C), and various concentration
levels (one-sun up to 500 suns under AM1 5) and compares
against typical one-sun flat-plate manufacturer's data. Even
after taking into account the negative temperature
dependence of the Fill Factor, the study shows that output
power in concentration systems is less affected by
temperature variations compared to one-sun flat-plate
designs. The overall effect of this reduced temperature
sensitivity for VOC of the HCPV cell on the power output at
operating temperature is analyzed and compared against
typical single and poly-crystalline silicon, front-junction, one-
sun, flat-plate manufacturer's data. Experimental and
analytical results show that typical flat-plate systems have a
-0.4%PC (4000 PPM) decrease in power versus -0.25%PC
(2500 PPM) for high-concentration systems.
INTRODUCTION
Thermal management has been an important issue
in photovoltaic power generating systems for both one-sun
and concentrated sun applications. Lowering the normal
operating temperature of the system increases the power
output for both applications. It is commonly believed that
concentrator systems are fundamentally inferior, compared
to one-sun designs, by having higher operating cell
temperatures when they are installed and operated at
similar sites under similar ambient conditions for wind and
temperature. However, after careful review of AMONIX's
Integrated High-Concentration Photovoltaic (IHCPV) system,
which uses high resistivity high efficiency back-junction
point-contact HCPV solar cells, it is clear that this simplistic
concept is invalid.
The temperature dependence of the AMONIX
HCPV cell for efficiency and open-circuit voltage have been
investigated. In Figure 1, the first 20 kW (nominal) IHCPV
system, installed at Arizona Public Service's Solar Test and
Research (STAR) facility in Tempe, AZ is shown. The
system contains approximately 4000 HCPV cells and
produced >20 kW, , under PVUSA operating conditions with
an operating efficiency of 18.2% (20.3% under standard test
conditions). In Table 1 the PVUSA report conditions and the
standard report conditions are summarized [IJ . Note the cell
operating temperature would typically be -55 C.
Figure 1: AMONIX 20 kW IHCPV System
TABLE 1
TEST CONDITIONS
PVUSA Test Conditions for Concentrators
850 W/m2 direct normal irradiance, 20' C ambient
temperature, and 1 mls wind speed (at 10 meters above
grade)
Standard Test Conditions
1000 W/m2 direct normal irradiance, 25' C cell
temperature, and 3 mls wind speed (at 10 meters above
grade)
It has been well known and consistently proven
that a solar cell with a certain photovoltaic power conversion
efficiency at one-sun would have a higher conversion
efficiency if operated at higher concentration at the same
temperature. The reason for this increase in efficiency is
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3365-4/94/0000-1500 $4.00 0 1994 IEEE
First WCPEC; Dec. 5-9, 1994; Hawaii
mainly due to the increase in open-circuit voltage (Voc) due
to increased light generated current. For an ideal solar cell
at 25' C this would result in an approximately 60 mV
increase in open-circuit voltage per decade of concentration
increase. A conventional low resistivity, front-junction
P'NN' solar cell with a one-sun efficienc of 17.3% and an
open-circuit voltage of 630 mV at 28 C demonstrated
ap roximately 20.3% efficiency with 745 mV at 100 suns,
28 C [2]. For this case, the increase in efficiency and
operating voltage were approximately 17% and 18%,
respectively.
It is apparent that, for 100 X concentrator systems,
approximately 100 times the residual heat must be
dissipated through the same cell area compared to one-sun
applications in the example above. Therefore, in actual
situations the temperature difference between the cell
temperature and ambient temperature would be somewhat
larger for concentrator systems compared to one-sun
systems. However, high open-circuit voltage reduces the
temperature sensitivity for the cell. Green et al. [3, 4, 51
have studied, and verified, this phenomena extensively over
the last ten years using their best one-sun cells.
lK
B
ANALYTICAL APPROACH
The electrical characteristics of a HCPV cell can be
represented by an equivalent circuit as shown in Figure 2.
I
IPh V
Figure 2: Schematic Diagram of Equivalent Circuit for HCPV
Cell
Equivalent Circuit Description
In general, diode current characteristics
described by
where n is called an ideality factor, k is Boltzman's Constant,
q is the electric charge, and T is absolute temperature.
Historically a solar cell's dark current characteristics in low
injection conditions can often be represented by using two
diodes, such as "DI" and "D2", with current transport
characteristics of exp(qV/kT) and exp(qW2kT) dependence
on voltage, respectively [SI. The dark current component of
diode "D2" is commonly attributed to depletion region
recombination and surface recombination [7,8]. Diode "03"
is introduced to describe the electrical characteristics of the
HCPV cell at high concentration operation where Auger
recombination process is a dominant recombination due to
the fact that minority carrier concentration approaches the
majority carrier concentration under high injection
conditions. Swanson et al calculated the contribution of
each recombination mechanism at the maximum power
point as a function of the incident power density for a high
resistivity back-junction point-contact cell [Q]. According to
the simulation the recombination current contribution from
Auger recombination process grows from zero percent
contribution at one-sun level through 20% at 100 sun level,
and 70% at 400 suns. In other words, the recombination
current due to other causes than Auger recombination
constitutes only 30% or less of the total recombination
current for a high resistivity back-junction point-contact cell
operating a concentrations higher than 400X.
The ideality (or diode quality) factor for a HCPV cell
operating at high current density level where predominant
recombination process is Auger recombination seems to be
less than one and approaching 213 (see "EXPERIMENT and
DISCUSSION" section). Similar behavior was predicted for
a conventional front junction cell by Hall [IO].
In Figure 2, the photocurrent is represented by a
current generator, /*, and is opposite in direction to the
forward bias currents of the diodes "DI", "D2" and "D3".
Shunt resistance paths are represented by R$h; they can be
caused by leakage currents on surfaces or in junctions. The
series resistance is represented by R, and can arise from
contact resistance, the resistance of the base region itself,
and the diffused regions.
The equivalent circuit in Figure 2 becomes
analytically manageable if the approximation that the series
and shunt resistance effects are negligible and that dark
current can be expressed as
where no is the ideality factor (junction quality factor or
junction perfection factor) of the idealized diode which is
dependent on the level. Then, the short circuit current
and open circuit voltage are simply given by
I s , =I p h (3)
(4)
Since the power outpiit is determined by (hv), the
maximum power output for the idealized HCPV cell would be
obtained by differentiating the product and setting the result
to zero. Then, the power expression becomes
(5)
kT
4
where V,, thermal voltage, is substituted for - .
dP
dV
Setting - =0 and using equations (3) and (4),
maximum power point voltage and current, V, and 1 , . are
obtained in implicit expressions
1501
vu, - ln(vUc +0.72)
(11-3)
-
- -
It is apparent from equation (6) that, for constant
temperature and n,, values, V,,, is uniquely defined by V ,
only and so is I,,,. If a ratio r is defined for VJV, (always
less than one) and a dimensionless voltage v, is defined for
V G T , then equation (6) becomes
- ( l - r ) =l n V O C ( l + r - ;;) (8)
n0
For a special case of no += 1, r(=V,,) values
corresponding to dimensionless v, values are plotted in
Figure 3. The Fill Factor for the idealized HCPV cell, FF,,,
can be obtained from
(9)
I ,
I S C
FF, = r -
where the sign of I,,, would be changed to positive knowing
that the cell is generating power.
1
08
o n
0 1
O B
0 5
>
0 4
03
02
0 1
0
d I
Figure 3: Calculated Values of r (=VmNoc) as a Function of
Dimensionless Open Circuit Voltage
With proper rearrangement, an exact expression
for FF,, turns out to be
Equation (IO) could be approximated, for a special case of
no= 1.
vu, +1
The equation (1 1-3) is an empirical expression independent
of ras first introduced by Green [I I].
Temperature Dependence Of V,,, and FF,
Temperature sensitivity of V,, can be obtained by
differentiating Vac, equation (4), with respect to temperature,
T. The saturation current, I,,,,, in equation (4) can be
expressed as
where ,(T) is the bandgap energy at temperature T and the
temperature dependence exponent (3+y12) is from the third
order dependence of intrinsic carrier concentration, n:, and
y order dependence for the ratio between carrier diffusivity
and lifetime (Dh).
( 3 + 9 .
The temperature dependence of the term T IS
not important compared with the exponential term. The
variation of bandgap with absolute temperature, T, is
expressed as Thurmud [I21
where JO) is 1.170 eV, Q is 4.73 X I O4 eVIK, and ! 3 is 636
K.
substitution of bandgap voltage, Vg(T), for Eg[T)/9 results in
Differentiation of equation (4) with respect to T and
I J
+v, --+--
(;cy; v1,d:3
The terms in the second parenthesis of equation (14) are
essentially dependent on dVg[T)/dT which is on the order of
less than 500 PPM at room temperature. Therefore, the
temperature dependence of V , is approximated as
where r is redefined from y to include the effects of
temperature dependence of Isc and bandgap voltage.
The Fill Factor decreases with increasing
temperature. The temperature dependence of FF,, can be
approximated assuming that parasitic resistances are not a
strong function of temperature along with those assumptions
used for the derivation of FF,. For a special case when the
ideality factor is one
1502
is a negative quantity. In equation (16), the term -
d V O C
dT
EXPERIMENTS AND DISCUSSION
Experiments were performed using typical AMONIX
HCPV cells to define the temperature sensitivity of V, at
various temperatures and concentrations. A one-sun test
was carried out using a standard cell (SIN AMNX 1805) at
four different temperatures, namely, 25', 45', 65', and 85'
C. For the temperature range tested, all cell parameters
showed linear behavior as exemplified in Figure 4(a) and
4(b) for their efficiency and V, , gespectively. As expected,
Isc sensitivity to temperature was below 500 PPM for the
temperature range investigated.
25% , 1
6 20%
2 15%
i 10%
-
- 5 % 1 ]
0%
5 25 45 65 85 105
Cell Temperature (DEG C)
Figure 4 A: One-Sun Efficiency of AMNX 1805 as a Function
of Temperature
500 -1
5 25 45 65 85 105
Cell Temperature (DEG C)
Figure 4 B: One-Sun Open Circuit Voltage of AMNX 1805 as
a Function of Temperature
In Table 2, the temperature sensitivity results are
summarized. For AMNX 1805 at one-sun, 25' C, the
using
1 dFFo
and -~ calculated values for -
dT .FF, dT
dV0,
equations (15) and (16) are 1.78 mVPC using r=0.8 and
1107 PPMPC using v,=26.52 respectively. In the 65' C
case for AMNX 1805 at one-sun, calculated values using the
same equations are: 1.79 mVPC and 1284 PPMPC. They
compare favorably with measured values in these cases.
The third and fourth columns are for AMNX 40 cell data
under 250X concentration (2!5 W/cm2 irradiance level).
TABLE 2
Temperature Sensitivity of AMONIX HCPV Cells for a
Temperature Range of 25-65' C
[ m d X 1805 I AMNX40 1
Figure 5 shows 'the characteristics of AMNX 1805
under concentration for its efficiency as a function of
irradiance up to approximately 25 W/cm2. The highest
efficiency of 26.3% occurred near 100 suns at 25' C. At
23.3 W/cm2 irradiance, the efficiency was 25.3% with a VOC
of 823 mV and J sc of 8.78 A/cm2. If it is assumed that the
recombination mechanism between 7 W/cm2 and 9 W/cm2
irradiance, also between 19 Vl'/cm2 and 23 Wlcm', for each
interval respectively, pseudo ideality factor, values
for the intervals can be calculated using
where subscript H and L represent high and low irradiance
data for the piecewise intellrals. The no,, pseudo values
calculated for 8 W/cmZ and 21 W/cm2 irradiance levels are
0.81 3 and 0.623, respectively, indicating that Auger
recombination mechanism is replacing the dominating
recombination mechanism at lciwer current levels.
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Letters, Vol. 18, No. 2, 1982, pp. 97-98
30
I
1 lo iw 1wO
Solar Concentration Level (Suns)
l O O X = IO W/cmZ
Figure 5: AMNX 1805 Efficiency Data
CONCLUSION
It is apparent from review of the AMNX 1805 data
that concentrator applications of the same cell would
produce power more efficiently. For a 250X concentrator
application, the cell would be approximately 20% more
efficient than one-sun applications. Due to the fact that
concentrator systems operate at high V, levels (also high
VA, applying a typical V, temperature coefficient of -2.0-
-2.2 mVPC (both crystalline and polysilicon flat-plates), for
predicting high concentrator performance severely
underestimates the system potential. Instead, a value of -
1.3--1.5 mV k should be applied for high-concentration
applications.
Also, for silicon (poly and crystalline) flat-plate
systems, a -0.4%PC (4000 PPM) power decrease around
25OC is common [13]. However, for high-concentration cells,
the power decrease would be only -0.25%PC (2500 PPM)
around 25' C. This represents a significant shift for
evaluating high-concentrator system performance.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors wish to acknowledge the work of
Sandia National Laboratories for cell performance
measurements and many valuable discussions, particularly
Mr. Dave King, Dr. J ames Gee, and Mr. Barry Hanson.
We also wish to recognize the pioneering work of
Dr. Martin Green of the University of New South Wales.
Mr. Warren McNaughton of Comice Engineering
provided considerble data and insight to this project [14].
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